[as if in dreams] A newsletter from Joseph Zitt #007
PDF (More printable) Edition
30 October, 2020
This is the seventh issue of the newsletter.
I've hit a milestone: I'm forgetting whether I wrote about specific things in earlier issues. I have to check. Having archives is useful. Not having thought to wonder about this before, I now see that the newsletter archive has an effective search bar. I continue to be pleased with Buttondown, the one-person operation who make the software and site.
I'm continuing to work on automating the PDF process. One aspect of it was setting up a way to run the needed scripts online, rather than just on my Mac at home, since I worry about processes with single points of failure. Adding the capability to run scripts where I host my main sites turned out to be mind-numbingly complicated. I've now set up a very small Linux box in the cloud via Linode. For US $7 month, including backups, I have a happy little sandbox.
The deadline of 2 PM Israel Time on Fridays hasn't been working. Since it turns out that the one person who I thought might print them before Shabbat isn't getting to them until Saturday night anyway, I'm sliding the deadline. My goal is to get it online before Shabbat officially starts here (though it will be a few minutes late today). It will still arrive on Friday morning, US time.
As always, please pass on the newsletter to anyone that might enjoy it. If someone passed this on to you and you like it, please subscribe! (And there's a link to unsubcribe, if needed, at the end of the emails.)
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Onward! (egging the nog?)
Contents
This Week's Posts
Friday, October 23rd, 2020
I haven’t walked through this park, north of my apartment and south of the House of a Hundred Grandmothers, in several months. The few times that I have gone to the House, I have either come from different directions or have been walking after dark, when the park is closed. It’s quiet this afternoon. I would expect to see families, but none are around. On the grass near the entrance, two young women are sitting and reading. They may be having a picnic. There are no dogs. The garden is barren, but it often is when the caretakers are changing the flowers for a new season. The fruit of the giraffe tree, as large as my head, hangs in clusters from its branches. None has fallen yet. I don’t continue to the House when I leave the park. It’s Friday afternoon. I’m going to the small supermarket to the left before it closes for the Sabbath. The shop is crowded with people doing last-minute shopping. I find everything that I need there: white cheese, sliced cheese, hummus, eggs, apples, peppers, pecans, and the first pomelo of the season. My aisle moves quickly. The other one is slower. The cashier there is babbling a monologue in English that I can’t follow. I get the sense that her customers are used to her doing this. They nod on occasion. No one seems rushed. Everyone has allocated enough time to do what they need. After I head out, I realize that I forgot to get challah. I still have much of last week’s. It’s slightly stale, but sufficient to eat with tonight’s supper. The park is still open when I get there. I walk back through it. It is still quiet. I see one cat, but it darts under the bushes when I get near it. The women are still on the grass. They are playing a board game. From a distance, I can’t tell which one.
Saturday, October 24th, 2020
I don’t get outdoors today. I wake up in the mid-morning, check messages, eat breakfast, and doze off at my desk. Somehow I end up back in bed. I wake up again at a little before three in the afternoon. I can’t gauge how long I’ve slept by my dreams. I tend to have what feels like a full night’s dreams in the first hour that I’m asleep, and then nothing else that I recall until just before I awaken. I check more messages and finish backing up my network drive. I try to play some music on my TV, but the app locks up. When I try to stop it, nothing works short of shutting the TV off. I look for another app that would work better. I don’t find anything. The new audio interface for my computer should arrive in a few days. I look forward to listening to and making music on it again. At about 5 PM, I get lunch: hummus left over from yesterday and a microwaved pita. By the time that I shower and get dressed, it’s after six. There’s little point in going out. I continue with what I’m doing. I make supper at about eight: the last piece of last week’s chicken, gnocchi, and a green pepper. I pack my bag of laundry to put out on the porch. The clocks change tonight. I hope I can get to sleep at a reasonable hour.
Sunday, October 25th, 2020
I should know not to shop for groceries when I’m tired and hungry. I stand, uncertain, at the entrance to the supermarket at the Heart of the City. I think of skipping it, but I need some things for breakfast tomorrow. I tell myself to stick to my usual shopping list, just getting things that I had planned. I do make one impulse purchase, a package of yellowfin tuna steaks that are surprisingly cheap. I still haven’t gotten used to how this place has reorganized itself, but I find what I need. The bread aisle slows me down. I know I have to get sliced bread, but hadn’t thought much about what kind. Multigrain, definitely, but there are too many choices. I close my eyes, open them, and get the first appropriate loaf that I see. Otherwise, it’s my usual haul: boneless chicken thighs, peppers, persimmons, small and large pitas, and rice desserts. I forget to get butter. Once out of the supermarket, I realize that I need to eat something. All the falafel joints are closed except the big popular one, and that place confuses me when I’m at my best. I carry my groceries into the city square, find a remote bench, and take a persimmon from the bag. Two benches down, the woman who collects the bottles sits with an array of cats. A man with very little Hebrew tries to ask or tell her something. They communicate through gestures. She corrects his grammar. I never figure out what he wants. I finish the persimmon, put my headphones on, and wander the rest of the way home. I unpack and stare at my groceries. Rather than choosing, I make myself a cheese sandwich.
Monday, October 26th, 2020
The landlord’s woodworking projects cluster together in the backyard. I can’t tell how many there are. A dismantled coffee table rests on the ground, with additional boards underneath the top. The body of a skateboard sits on a metal table, its wheels removed. What looks like a bird feeder camps in a corner where cats sleep in the winter. Its pointed roof, about a foot above the base, covers a flat tray with low walls. Any of these objects could turn into something else. I hadn’t expected the elements of the bird feeder to take the form that they have now. In the front yard, as I pass, the landlord is buffing a fresh coat of bright orange paint on a child’s bicycle frame. On the way to work, I stop at the shop to pick up a package. I find that there are two. Both are books, from the same vendor. The smaller package is in a plastic wrapper. In Hebrew and English, the postal service apologizes profusely for having damaged it. I open it carefully. The book is fine. The bookstore knows how to pack them to survive shipping. I’m tempted to sit on a bench and read the books, but that would mean deciding which to read first. I really should get to work. Another package comes for me at the office: the new audio interface for my computer at home. It’s supposed to be new. The box is open, with a label torn off of it. The contents appear to be intact. I blame it on customs inspectors, or whoever guards the country against hazardous hardware. I keep glancing at all of the packages while at work and eagerly carry them home. In the backyard, when I get there, the birdhouse is on the metal table, next to the skateboard. A cat is sleeping in it. I juggle my packages as I dig for my keys. Once inside, I’ll figure out what to do next.
Tuesday, October 27th, 2020
The cashier at the supermarket downstairs asks me if I want a bag. This time, I do. I’m picking up a few other things while I’m here to get my yogurt and apple. Rather than the usual shopping bag, she picks up a much thinner one, usually used for produce. She stuffs my items into it as she scans them. That’s never happened before. We’ve always had to pack our own bags. She asks me if I want a spoon for my yogurt. I don’t. I have a spare one from when I made coffee earlier. The plastic spoons we have in the kitchen are thin enough that I often pick up two when I only mean to get one. My debit card doesn’t work when she scans it. Some machines have trouble with it. No problem. I use a different one. She insists on spraying alcohol gel onto my hands. OK. The bag of groceries doesn’t have handles. It starts to slide out of my hand while I’m in the elevator. I reach down with the other hand and cradle it from underneath. I have to do some juggling to enter the code to get back into the office. The bag tears just as I get to my desk. Nothing breaks. I have a cloth shopping bag in a drawer. I’ll use that when I go home.
Wednesday, October 28th, 2020
All the tables are taken in the city square. People sit at each of them, eating, watching each other, or looking at their phones. The caregivers and elders have clustered near the main street. The butcher shop may be open. I see someone moving around behind the counter. I don’t see any customers. The rest of the shops are closed. I sit down on a bench near the edge with another omelette sandwich and a soda. Cats rest on the bench next to me. Fewer people move through the square than usual. It’s cool outside, but not chilly. In the morning, my laundry doesn’t appear until after I’m dressed. I dip into my shelf of less-used clothing and put on my vintage Electronic Frontier Foundation t-shirt. It looks pretty much like it did thirty years ago. No one that I see today notices it. Few here would know what it represents. It’s just right for the temperature today. In the square, when I’m done eating, I toss my trash in the bin and leave the bottle beside it. When I get home, I see a bicycle frame hanging from a tree in the front yard. I guess the paint is still drying. A grey cat runs up to me as I open the gate. It hops onto the fence, stares at me, then jumps back down. I take care not to trip over it as I walk to the back and down the stairs.
Thursday, Octover 29th, 2020
A cluster of children in costumes, carrying plastic pumpkins half-full of candy, passes me after work. That’s a surprise. I’ve never seen anyone trick-or-treating here. I wonder where they are headed. Most people would be puzzled and unprepared if these kids would ring their doorbells. I’m on my way to the usual burger joint. It’s fairly quiet when I get there. Their boss is at the register. He says something to me in Hebrew that I don’t understand. I tell him that I’d like to get an order to go. That’s redundant, since they’re only doing takeout, but it’s a start. He switches to English. “One moment.” He answers the phone and takes an order from the caller. He looks back at me when he’s done. “You would like to order?” I ask for a mushroom burger. He takes my name. “And you would like the sweet potato fries and a diet cola? See, I remember you!” I do. “It will only be a few minutes. Stay close.” I step outside and lean on a high table as I flip through the news on my phone. I’ve only read two articles when he calls my name. “You see? This time we are fast. Last time, I know that we were very slow but you were patient. I remember.” He puts my items in a bag. We thank each other. Two blocks from home, I see images of witches and pumpkins on the stone fence of the newest house on the pedestrian street. A plastic chair blocks the gate open. A large bowl on it holds even more candy. I hope the kids find this place. When I saw them, they were headed the other way.
On writing as if in dreams
A little while into this project, I made a very intentional change in my writing.
I had a writing voice, in a sense, that I had been using for a while, culminating in The Book of Voices. But it wasn't entirely my voice. It was increasingly becoming a pastiche of another writer. For most writing questions, I was asking, consciously or not, "What would Samuel R. Delany do?"
Delany himself is brilliant, of course. but he doesn't need a clone. I had to take a sharp turn. I haven't read anything of his, other than some interviews, for a few years (though I may not be able to resist the book drawn from his mid-70s diaries scheduled for next year). I've been looking to other writers for stylistic inspiration, including Patti Smith, Ron Silliman, J. Michael Straczynski, and (in his more narrative modes) John Cage. I don't think I write particularly like any of them, but I'm turning to their writing, rather than just one single author, to see what to do.
I don't know that I've found "my" voice. I think if I ever do, it will mean that I'm stagnating. It might be that, at a certain phase or age, I will settle into a particular style and stop looking. But I'm nowhere near there yet.
Things of Possible Interest
One thing I'm watching
I only found out about Living Music: Pirate Radio Edition a couple of days ago from an off-hand mention in the New York Times. It is (or was) a weekly performance and talk show focusing on new music. (That's a vague term. Much of it would be filed under Classical, but much might not.) I've only seen the most recent episode so far. It's great.
Radio host Nadia Sirota, who is herself a phenomenal violist in these genres, hosts the show on Facebook Live. The episode that I saw featured the string quartet Brooklyn Rider playing new works by Matana Roberts and Caroline Shaw; Ian Chang (better known as the drummer of Son Lux to those who know of Son Lux) playing solo works for drums and electronics; and composer Jacob Cooper with a video of a new piece featuring the voice of one of my favorite singers, Theo Bleckmann.
It's a relaxed talk show format. The host and artists chat in a Zoom-like setup from their own homes, with video performances dropped in. (The show also has really clever animations connecting segments.)
The most recent episode aired in mid-July. There have been 26 of them, with guests including other avant-garde all stars. I get the sense that many of the artists are friends of the host, which figures. She's been broadcasting on the radio for over a decade, teaches at the Manhattan School of Music, and has played with many of them.
I'm looking forward to watching the rest of the series, starting from the top. Fun will be had.
One thing I'm hearing
Back to Morton Feldman, again.
YouTube, in its inscrutable algorithms, brought me to a video of Aki Takahashi's record of Feldman's Triadic Memories. It wasn't what I had expected. The music seemed uncharacteristically fast and loud. It has a real forward momentum, in which I could follow audibly what was happening. I'm not used to that from Feldman.
Looking things up, I see that Takahashi does play it much faster than most recordings. Her version takes a few seconds over an hour, while other recordings take from about an hour and a half to two hours. Christopher Fox, in his liner notes to John Snijders's recording, claims that Feldman had said that the piece should take about ninety minutes and that Feldman told Takahashi that she played it too fast, There's no metronome marking in the score.
The piece was dedicated to Takahashi and Roger Woodward. Woodward's recording (which I don't see online) starts similarly, though he interprets the opening notation as something close to a waltz, and he takes the ninety minutes.
Feldman's notation, though, is notoriously screwy. You can see it onscreen in the Takahashi video. The first measure, for example, is in 3/8 time, but the left hand is marked as a quadruplet, effectively fitting four beats in the time of the three, and then splitting those into regular and dotted eighth notes. It's precise, to an extent that I doubt that many performers could play it exactly right.
I have an ongoing hunch that Feldman, for whatever reason, wanted to make his pieces as hard to play as he could. The Kronos Quartet famously bailed out on a scheduled performance of his six-hour String Quartet No.2, fearing physical injury if they did the whole thing. (Other, younger, quartets have since performed it. Here's audio of a live performance by the FLUX Quartet.)
I saw a weekend festival of the music of Feldman and John Cage some decades ago in NYC. The performance of Feldman's Rothko Chapel was glorious. The performance of Three Voices, by its dedicatee, Joan La Barbara, was excruciating, though perfect. Two of the voices came from speakers, while La Barbara sang live between them. The music batted back and forth with tiny variations between repetitions. On record, it's wonderful. Live, it felt like the singer and audience were hostages.
(Looking at that post, I see that I must have caught a lot of other amazing music. Odd that, eighteen years later, those are the only two pieces that I remember.)
Fox suggests that Feldman had grown to dislike the idea of needing a live audience. I can understand that. I like (and write) music that doesn't demand long stretches of attention. There are those who like being stuck in chairs all facing the same direction for a long time watching musicians, who visually don't change at all, play music that changes very little. I think other media might be more suited to that. It will be interesting to see how things evolve in live performance once we can attend them again.
One thing I'm reading
I've been a fan of Patti Smith since I first heard her album Horses and got her book Babel soon after their release in the late '70s. Her writing may be the single biggest influence on what I'm writing now.
Her latest book, Year of the Monkey, is now out in paperback. It's a memoir of a quiet year in her life. Rather than touring with her rock band, she got to wander about on her own. The book weaves in and out of dream states, so you're never quite sure which things happened in the real world, which are dreams, and which are metaphors. It's also an evocation of the loss of two of the most important people in her life, her mentor Sandy Pearlman and the playwright Sam Shepard.
The writing is detailed yet spare, saying no more than it needs to. Everything in her life seems to connect with everything else, inside her mind and out in the world.
It's also a beautifully made physical book, produced with more care than most paperbacks. It's expanded from the hardcover edition, with more of her black-and-white photographs and an extended "Epilogue to an Epilogue," which takes her into the current year and its complications.
Check out the page for the book on her publishers' site. It has an excerpt as text, as a clip from her audiobook, and, via a "Look Inside" link, as a glimpse of the printed design. Listening to the audio, I want to read the whole thing again.
One more thing
I'm taking next week off from work (though not from writing). My boss asked if I could wait for a few months, since the end of the year tends to be busy. I told him that the US election were kind of like the World Cup to me, and that I would return more energized and focused. He got that.
I voted by email, but discovered yesterday that I hadn't mailed the printed ballot back, which is needed. Fortunately, it turns out that American voters here can drop their ballots off at the consulate in Tel Aviv. So I'll be going there Monday.
I'll have to double-check where the consulate is. The embassy, before it officially moved to Jerusalem, was in a prime beachfront location. There was a deal in place for the US to give the spot back to Israel in exchange for the new location in Jerusalem. True to form, the current US administration is apparently reneging on the deal.
A prominent businessman told me this week that, as little as he likes Trump, he has to admire him for his supposedly making the US stronger by tearing up existing accords that weren't in its favor. I don't get this. I would think that, were I a businessman, I would refuse to work with another one who refused to honor agreements. But that just shows, I guess, that I have no head for business. I keep letting morality get in the way.
This week should be very interesting. Stay tuned.
Colophon
(Unchanged from last week, except for this line!)
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